


Time and Time Again

by thebigbengal



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Gen, Time Loop, Twin Peaks Season/Series 03 Era, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me-Related, Twin Peaks: The Return, part 17/18, the dale cooper way, trying really hard to save someone and constantly failing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-18 11:16:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13680594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebigbengal/pseuds/thebigbengal
Summary: Laura Palmer, seventeen, alive. Agent Cooper takes her hand, and they walk off. He turns. Laura Palmer, seventeen, dead. He tries again.





	Time and Time Again

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of meant to be read along side The Missing Piece, though it's not required to understand what's happening.

_Again._

 

Electricity. Krackling. Fragmenting. The world slips off, pages flipping back and flying into distant stars. The air burns with lightning. The frame holding the present juts backward, farther and farther from view, and darkness drags in. Cold air reaches around, slowly climbing up arms and legs and a chest that pop into the old existence. A time long past.

 

The date: February 23rd, 1989.

 

Past the trees: a road. A motorcycle. She is there.

 

_There she is._

 

Her soul speaks, tired and sad and still so young.

 

_So young._

 

She cries and runs off. Off to her death, to her prison, to _his_ prison, where her lips, chapped from screaming, will prick his ears from twenty-five years ago, twenty-five years into the future, the gap sharply closing, and consuming him.

He sees it clearly: a body, wrapped in plastic, a broken town, a broken family, a broken life that was never fulfilled - her life, _his_ life. Failure. Death after death. Loss. His own loss come to break off more of him. The red room, where she appears again and again, sobbing and screaming and whispering terrible secrets, the halls devouring them.

And now a chance. For her, for him, for everyone.

She approaches, teary eyed and small, and shrinking even further among the trees.

 

_Still so young…_

 

“Who are you? Do I know you”

 

Questions they both already know the answers to. Past, present, and future. Dreams coiling around and crossing at both ends, two points of view converging seamlessly. A Mobius strip. Always the same footsteps, the same garbled messages passed back and forth. A girl in trouble. An old man.

He reaches out, a withered hand asking - _begging -_ for hers. She presses it into his, unsure, then positive. He secures her in his grasp.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“We’re going home.”

 

Step by step, trees divide and vanish, every sound with them, watching the two patiently from the black. He looks back, her eyes gleaming through the dark, trusting.

 

_Home…_

 

The broken home, the lifeless home. Innocence stolen by the teeth of a monster. He knows what to do, now. 

 

_You’re going home, Laura._

 

Scratching. Empty. Her screams - twenty-five years ago, twenty-five years later - shatter through the frames. His blood thickens in his throat. She’s ripped from him once more, and the stars settle back into place.

 

_Again._

 

“ ?sI ti erutuf, ro si ti tsap”

 

The room folds in, moving him forward and back simultaneously, ears popping with each step.

 

“My father killed me.”

 

_No._

 

“dniF aruaL.”

 

_Yes._

 

Around. A dark forest.

The date: February 23rd, 1989.

 

_There she is._

 

Her hand in his, homeward bound. A shriek pierces him, shrieks from a train car. A body, wrapped in plastic. A broken town, a broken family. A broken house.

 

“My father killed me.”

 

_No._

 

“dniF aruaL.”

 

_Again._

 

An empty hand. A dead hand. She is cold. She screams from beyond the curtains and not from her mouth. He listens.

He begs.

 

“Don’t take the ring, Laura. Don’t take the ring.”

 

Brass suffocates her finger. It's tossed back to the void to wander from body to body. Hers lies at his feet. Cold. He turns back.

She still walks those halls with him, from him, around him. She approaches, static trailing up, louder and louder. Pin pricks on his brain. Death after death. Death after life. A life never fulfilled.

Through the trees, she goes to him, crying. Hand in hand, and the house sitting on the edge of infinity just in sights. Stars spin. His hand is empty.

 

_Again._

 

“I wanted to tell him who Bob is because **I thought he could help me…** ”

_“ **Help me…** ” _

 

_Help her…_

 

A plan. Intricate, flawless. He knows what to do, now. Twenty-five years past, twenty-five years into the future meet to open the doors.

 

“Some things will be different.”

 

_Things will be different._

 

He goes through, familiar faces fading from mind. Hers takes their place. Blonde, wide-eyed, sad, lost-

 

“-in high school. She is sexually active. She is using drugs. **She’s crying out for help.** ”

 

_“ **Help me…** ” _

 

“But because it is just a feeling, I am powerless to stop it.”

 

The forest pulls them along. He looks back. Her hand, warm, clasped in his. So close, and still there. Very much there. Her blood slows, turns stagnant. Life leaves her, he feels every inch drain away. Flesh becomes stone to the touch. Wet. A body, wrapped in plastic. She crumbles away, dust into dirt, dirt into soil. He pulls away and breaks off a piece. Trees spit upward, then melt in the dark, the forest dissolving before him. He collapses by their side. 

 

_Again._

 

Pages torn and frayed, their illuminations faded from abuse. Unrecognizable. Every twist in the wire bringing it closer to snapping. He knows what to do, now. Every turn sharpening in clarity. The trail so beaten and burnt. He swings the doors open.

February 23rd, 1989.

 

_Again._

 

February 23rd, 1989.

 

_Again._

 

The screaming, the crying. Death after death.

 

February 23rd 1989.

 

_Again._

 

_“_ dniF aruaL.”

 

“My father killed me.”

 

“We’re going home.”

 

_Home…_

 

There is no home.

Who's house is this? Where has that broken family gone that should no longer be broken? 

 

_What year is this?_

 

There is no Laura. There is no hand.

He feels cold. Stone. She is flesh and blood, pain running through her.

She calls the darkness with her voice, the dream collapsing overhead. 

The forest screams. He hears but doesn't listen. He goes around.

Around.

 

_Again._

 


End file.
